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Tuesday, April 07, 2015

The Propaganda Game

"The Imitation Game" is a very good movie and is coming out on
DVD. It has been our family tradition to
go to a movie on Christmas day and this past year we saw “The Imitation Game”. I was looking forward to the movie about
mathematician Alan Turing and his work that helped crack Germany’s Enigma code
during World War II. The film is very
well produced, directed and acted (I confess I’m a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch). However, after seeing the film, I felt like I
just witnessed a piece of propaganda for the homosexual political agenda, so I
decided to investigate the historical accuracy of the film and found quite a
different story.

There is a basic skeleton of facts the movie gets correct: Alan Turing was homosexual; his work in
mathematics and cryptography were instrumental in the development of the
machines that cracked the Nazi code and led to modern computers; he was engaged to Joan Clark; his home
was burglarized; he was convicted of indecency and sentenced to “chemical
castration.”

Unfortunately, the movie includes a great deal of
fiction: Alan Turing was open about his
homosexuality; Joan Clark knew of his attraction to men; their engagement was not to rescue
her from her conservative parents, they genuinely liked each other; he was
not a brusque, humorless, narcissist; he did not singlehandedly design and build
the machine; he did not name any of the machines he built “Christopher”; and he
most certainly would not have committed treason to keep secret his proclivity that was not so secret.

The ultimate point of the film, on which the power of its propaganda
rests, is that Alan Turing committed suicide because of the suffering he endured due to
his sentence. While the determination
that his death was a suicide is itself questionable, he died a full 14 months
after his treatments, not while enduring them as the film depicts.

These inaccuracies and many more can be found at these
articles at history vs hollywood, the guardian and slate. While I understand that film makers often add
fictional aspects to historical events for powerful dramatic effect, i.e. Jack and Rose in "Titanic", I do wish they would take better care to get the historical
data right. With a generation that gets
it’s truth in 30 second bites, objective truth will be lost to slickly produced
images and special effects.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

I just want to thank you for your article. I agree with your assessment of the movie and was also disappointed that it ended by pushing an agenda. It does not surprise me that elements of the story were fabricated, but it is too bad that the story of Turing was not sufficient in itself, without the filmmakers creating a statement of propaganda.